Tag Archives: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya

International Symposium on the forms of the prodigy in the Medieval Mediterranean. It will bring together scholars from all areas of medieval history around the marvelous and its image in the Middle Ages.

The symposium will talk about how on an ancient substrate, reworked by the Christian tradition, a diversity of places, stories and beliefs were shaping the profiles of the prodigy to the Middle Ages. Reactivated by the opening of the Mediterranean, religious, commercial or military trips extended cults, stories and precious objects through Christianity. The real and imaginary adventure confronts the protagonists with fabulous characters and places. The cult of Eastern saints will find anchor points in the West where, on occasions, they will develop with as much or more intensity than in their place of origin, an evident symptom of their polycentric character.

The symposium will take place from October 18th to October 20th, 2018, in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona. More information can be found on the museum’s website.

Following earlier conferences on Romanesque and the Past (London, 2010), and Romanesque and the Mediterranean (Palermo, 2012), the British Archaeological Association is collaborating with the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Research project Magistri Cataloniae to stage the third in a biennial series of international conferences concerned with Romanesque art and architecture. This conference, Romanesque: Patrons and Processes, is concerned with patronage – and agency – in their broadest senses during the Romanesque period. Thus, in addition to more traditional prosopographical approaches, and examinations of individual patrons, there will be papers on various forms of institutional patronage. The conference will also address the processes involved in commissioning buildings or works of art – the mechanics of design – authorship – intermediaries and agents – and the extent to which patrons are designers. Are there limits to patronal influence?

The conference will open at 9:30 on Monday, 7 April with lectures at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (Parc de Montjuïc, 08038 Barcelona). Teas, coffees and lunch will be provided on all three days, in addition to dinners on two evenings and a drinks reception on the third. The conference will also include a late afternoon visit to the Romanesque collections at Museu Nacional, and a visit to the complex of early medieval and Romanesque churches at Terrassa. More information will be provided on the website.